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Ann had been three days at Tirau, and all was going well. She had lost her first feeling of loneliness and nostalgia, and now was keenly alive to all the interest and fascination of this new environment.

On the fourth day Mrs. Ralston, the wife of one of the neighboring station-owners, had motored over with her three small children soon after lunch, and the little Holmes girls were released from further lessons in order to entertain their guests. So Ann, glad to have a few hours to herself, set off for a walk over the hills towards the back of the run. Most of these hills had long ago been cleared of the primeval forests which had clothed them until fifty or sixty years previously. Now they were pasture land for sheep and cattle. But here and there a clump of glossy-leaved karaka trees gave welcome shade, and the green tops of the mop-headed cabbage-trees rattled in the warm wind. Tall clumps of flax grew in the valleys; and white flowering manuka outlined some of the steeper ridges. There had been more welcome rain during the past few days, and now spurs and gullies were green and fresh in the warm sunshine. After a dry winter and an early rainless spring, the farmers rejoiced in the breaking of the drought; but